Popagandhi

Packing for Thailand is always a breeze. As long as you have Nancy Chandler’s maps, you’re all set — everything else, you can buy. It feels good to have a five figures of currency to your name.. never mind that it’s baht.

It’s easy to have these romantic notions about travelling.. oh, if only it was just going to the airport and wandering around streets! I have these fantasies about being that traveller who “does Indochina” for 2 months with just one daypack. Unfortunately, I’m not an 18 year old hippie backpacker, and hygiene and toiletries are most important. I didn’t before, but now believe that no detail about the entire process — involving packing — is too small to leave out, when speaking of travel.

Someone asked me to post on how I pack (specifically, the gear I bring), so I will today. The clothes I need usually number no more than: 1 very large Tshirt and 1 very tiny shorts (girls’ school camping practices continue even as we sleep in other countries), 2-3 tops, 2 fisherman’s pants/skirt wraps. Fisherman’s pants are the female backpacker’s best friend because they’re practically negligible (in your bag, that is), and comfortable. You just need to learn to untie them quickly enough for occasions of diarrhoea.

The gadget aficionados among you will face the same problem I do: choosing what gear to pack and how to take them. For this trip I’ve had to restrict my gear to just a Canon 350D and a rented Fuji GA645i (medium format), a few rolls of 120 film and slides, a monopod and an external flash, though the Olympus XA2 makes a very good travel camera because of its size and excellent performance. I wouldn’t usually hesitate to bring my laptop for storage and processing purposes but am now bringing a CompactDrive PD70x instead. It doesn’t sound like much, but the miscellaneous items which go along with them — battery chargers (for camera batteries, and for AA batteries), wires, lens blowers, all add to a substantial amount of heft — and I’m a small, average sized Asian female, already collapsing under the weight of this equipment.

Previously, most attention was paid to the backpack, and what went in: the camera and electronic stuff, though more important and used more frequently than anything inside the backpack, was given little attention; so let’s just say I’ve learned the hard way how packing without careful thought is bound to end up in daily cursing. Since I will never check in any of my equipment so I need to keep them by my side, and yet be sufficiently small and light enough to fit on the cabin. I’m one of those people with a bag fetish who are always on the lookout for The Perfect Bag, but now I think I might as well pursue the Holy Grail instead..

The temporary storage solution for current trips is clunkier than I would like. For longer trips I might take the 55L backpack, but that one’s been banished to storage to prepare for India (April); today it’ll have to be a small (by my standards) Jansport that’s just a little larger than a daypack. The good thing about travelling with your partner is that you don’t need to be dressed all the time, so that saves space. :) In that backpack, ziplocks are your best friends, and even in the arrangement of ziplocks, there’s a certain manner of arrangement that holds the key to the backpacker’s happiness. Trash bags. Extra ziplocks. No more than one additional pair of shoes, no more than 1 additional pair of pants. Take as many pairs of underwear as you want; they’re my single most essential items. Travelling is not a fashion show.

The gear have called a Crumpler home for a while now, and it’s not something I’m pleased with — Crumpler’s bags sit very badly on my shoulders. But the system works, because all the cameras and related items goes into the Bunion Weenie (a camera insert), which in itself sits firmly in a Crumpler Seedy Three. Once I get to my location I find the spot anyone who breaks into the room will look into first, like the corner of the wardrobe, and leave the entire Bunion Weenie in there, while taking out whatever equipment I need for the day. This arrangement works well because that clunky insert lets you transport quite a number of items, and once you put it away you can use the Seedy Three (or any other Crumpler bag that’s large enough to hold one) as a day sling (no matter what they say about sling bags being the worst kind of bags you can take on a trip..). All gear from this moment forth is transported in a more comfortable manner, with either my LowePro Photo Runner or Sideline Shooter, which has been squashed inside the backpack. So that’s how it goes for now, it could be better; I’d like a Domke or a Kata bag, but camera bags are “only” a fraction of the cost of the equipment they carry, which is still not something I can afford.

Some important thoughts:

A ’small’ backpack is, on an average sized Asian female, pretty damn big.

A ’small’ camera BELTpack, is, to the average sized Asian female, a TORSOpack.

An average sized Asian female with an oversized camera, is somehow the international symbol for “any guys, locals or travellers, with or without cameras, come give me instructions on how to operate MY dSLR and speak condescendingly to me about aperture and composition!”

I’m definitely done too much heavy packing. Oh look, there’s Max Weber’s Essays in Sociology, Economy and Society.. Durkheim on Morality and Society.. Yes. I’ve definitely overpacked. I must remove them immediately, and only by convincing myself that the one week break is “recess” week, not reading week or - horror - “study” week. Midterms, what’re those?